Waze currently will use the stop point for routing only if Waze uses the internal house number search result. For the US and many other countries, Waze does no use internal house numbers at all and so the stop point doesn't matter.

One of the reasons the internal house numbers has been promoted to primary address search provider is exactly what you bring up: we cannot yet place the stop point on any segment. When we get that ability, which we've been asking to be added for about a year now, then Waze will start using internal house numbers for address searches.

mzellman wrote:I guess that's the question... what benefit do stop points even add that isn't already handled by the pins?

Right now, the "stop point" is what gives the address its street name and other info. We've asked for the ability to keep that data but have a stop point located elsewhere.

Having the geo position of an address properly located for an address (centered, as it should be) which then allows you to position the stop-point to be the front of the store and not the rear or side, just because a segment may be closer to that side segment, or freeway ramp, or highway running right behind the store.

mzellman wrote:For routing software, shouldn't the geo position of the address always be located at or near the entrance, rather than centered on the property? Is there some other use for the geo position that makes it more useful for it to be centered?

No. In the case of malls or other locations with large parking lots, business parks where the address is perhaps 1/4mi off the road through a tangle of lot roads, then "at the entrance" isn't good enough. I had it happen last night that an address I went to was in a "stall" of a business park and if that nav had stopped at the main road entrance, in the dark and in the dense fog, I would have had significant trouble finding the right building and the right spot.

Why does Waze use the stop point for routing, rather than the pin coordinates? If Waze used the pin coordinates, the pin could be placed at the entrance to the location, regardless of what road the entrance was on. Is there some benefit to using the stop point that makes it more convenient than the pin location, even though it can't handle situations where the entrance is not actually on the addressed street?

For routing software, shouldn't the geo position of the address always be located at or near the entrance, rather than centered on the property? Is there some other use for the geo position that makes it more useful for it to be centered?

"Entrance" doesn't have to refer to any road in particular (I was actually using it to refer to the entrance to a building, rather than to a parking lot); it can just be a point that the navigation needs to be aiming for when the roads (including lot roads, etc.) are constructed properly. Perhaps a reasonable standard would be midway between the actual entrance to the address and the nearest navigable road segment from which the destination is accessible. This would prevent routing to incidental roads nearby, and still allow good navigation through parking lots and such.

This is basically how Waze seems to route to addresses from external sources, so I think that simply using the pin instead of the stop point, along with a standard like this for pin placement, might simplify the whole addressing system, allowing the use of native Waze addresses as a primary source, without making any changes either to the way house numbers are currently stored, or to any of the actual routing algorithms.